Tragically, religion has often been associated with violence, repression, war, and vengeance. In this searing work Marc Ellis asks, is there God beyond violence? Ellis's personal quest for religious integrity in the face of evil leads him to probe religious dimensions of both historical violence (in the colonizing of the Americas and the Holocaust) and contemporary eruptions of barbarism in Bosnia, Rwanda, or the Mideast. He also queries the works of prominent contemporary theologians from Moltmann and Ruether to Wiesel and Fackenheim, questioning whether reformist movements might ultimately merely gloss over religious distortions. His uncompromising moral sensitivity poses a frank examination of conscience for all Christians and Jews who seek honestly to engage their tradition and their God.
